Louder Than Words (12 page)

Does she feel anything of what I feel? Even a faint shadow of it?

Did you ever feel this way about anyone, Dad? I wish you could tell me.

Silas

CHAPTER 20

I relaxed on Josie’s giant, squashy couch and shuffled through the choice of five DVDs she’d handed me. She’d announced it was Film Night and that apparently meant her dad was working so we had the place to ourselves and could have a film-watching marathon with plenty of snacks to support us. Josie was currently getting these ready. She took a packet of frankfurters from the microwave and replaced it with a bag of popcorn.

‘Gotta love the hot dogs,’ she said, ramming the frankfurters into buns and squirting mustard and ketchup on to them. ‘Have you picked yet?’

I held up a romcom.

‘Put it on, will you? This food’s nearly ready and the trailers will run while I’m getting everything together. I never watch them – they do my head in.’

I put the film on, then helped her bring the food over and arrange it on the huge footstool that doubled as a coffee table.

Josie flopped on to the sofa beside me. ‘Annnnddd PIG OUTTT!’ she cried, grabbing a hot dog.

I didn’t know how hungry I was until I started eating, or maybe it was because I was so relaxed there that my hunger let loose. I loved this room, loved chilling in it. I was going to have a room just like this when I was older.

Oh yes, I’d forgotten. Not much of a future out there for a basket case who won’t talk. Not one that would finance a house and furniture like this anyway.

LOL. What did I think I was going to do? Live off Silas forever?

‘What’s up?’ Josie said, pausing as she took a bite of hot dog.

I shook my head and she gave me her ‘don’t even try that on with me’ look. She got up and took my phone off the arm of the sofa and dropped it into my lap.

I sighed.

‘Doh, yes! About what?’

She gave me that hard stare again.

She hit pause on the video. ‘We can wait to watch this. So you do want to talk again?’

She laughed. ‘You know I totally get what you mean by that. I don’t understand why obviously, but that is so cool – YesNo. I love it!’

She won a smile from me.

‘So let’s do this! What is “Yes” about it?’

Even this was so hard. Couldn’t we just watch the film?

‘No, we can’t just watch the film. Answer the question.’

How transparent was I?! Embarrassing!

Josie tapped her fingers expectantly on the arm of the couch. ‘Any time now, you know, before the bread buns go mouldy . . .’

I stuck my tongue out at her and began to type.

She smirked. ‘You forgot “Boyfriend”. And don’t look at me like that. You will so be having one. When you feel ready and there’s no rush. Don’t be dumb like me – wait for a good ’un. OK, so give me the “No”.’

‘Yeah, that is going to be a bit of an issue. People are bound to make a big deal of it, there’s no way round that. But we can get a plan together, you know, to cope with that part.’ She passed me another hot dog. ‘Come on, I can’t eat all these on my own. Um,
can
you actually talk? You know, if you want to . . .’

I shook my head.

‘So what stops you?’

‘And have you been to see people about this?’

She frowned. ‘When was the last time?’

‘You are joking me,’ she said with a gasp. ‘You haven’t been to get help in all that time. What is your mum thinking of?’

I shrugged.

‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But why?’

‘Silas said you had progressive mutism so obviously I looked that up. It said it’s usually at school where kids clam up.’

Nod.

‘But most of those kids still talk at home or they only stop for a short period, whereas with you it’s been years.’

Nod.

‘But this progressive mutism you have is where gradually someone stops talking to everyone?’

Nod.

‘I read this blog by a dad whose daughter has had it for as long as you but he says most kids get over it much quicker.’

Yes, I was a freak, wasn’t I? I knew this. I’d read all those internet articles myself, over and over. There was nothing googlable on mutism that I hadn’t seen. Including how it used to be called elective mutism because the doctors, much like my mum now, believed at the time that we chose to be this way. I’d read about the treatment options available now, and how it had changed even in the years since I was tiny and first began to falter with speech. But I’d also read about how a lot of health professionals still didn’t understand it and I didn’t want to face more of that.

And the most infuriating part of those articles? The advice to parents on how they should act. Because it would never, never happen like that for me.

‘So did this kick off when you started school? Is that where you first stopped talking?’

Josie paused in taking a bite of her last hot dog. ‘Really? I never read anything about that. They said it’s a social phobia and usually kids can talk OK in the family, or at least more than they do outside it. I’m sure I read that they use the parent to get the child’s answers to questions while the therapist is out of the room if that helps.’

Yes, I’d read that bit too. Ha!

‘So who was the last person you spoke to?’

‘Yeah, I thought it might be.’

He’d been too young when I began to stop talking to be taken to therapy with me. I often wondered if they would have been able to halt the progression if he hadn’t been. But no, I had to have Mum there as my attempt to have a voice. Which was kind of funny considering she was the one I stopped talking to first.

I never knew what that last therapist said to her that time she stormed out, dragging me back to the car by the arm and saying she’d never take me back there again. And she never did.

‘Did you ever write that story, Rafi, the one I asked you to?’

Nod.

‘You don’t want me to see it yet, do you?’

Shake of head.

‘OK. But you know why you stopped, don’t you?’

Now it was a very strange thing but absolutely nobody had ever asked me that question, not even my brother. It’s incredible how the most obvious things are the ones we overlook.
That’s
a truth I kept in my notebook with the rest.

Nod. Because I really thought I did know. I thought in all these years I’d managed to suss it out.

Josie nodded back slowly. ‘Then if you know that, I reckon one day when you’re ready someone will be able to help you fix it. But you have to want it fixed. It has to come from you.’ She sat up suddenly very straight as if a realisation had hit her. ‘You control this. No one else. Maybe that’s part of it. Having something to control when so much seems beyond control. You know?’

Yes, I knew. That wasn’t how it started, but a journey takes us along many different paths from the one we began to walk on.

I grabbed the remote control from her and pressed play. Conversation over.

CHAPTER 21

I nearly didn’t write about what happened to me next as, after all, this has always been about Silas and not me, but then I found I couldn’t leave out my part, or Josie’s, and have it still make sense. Our stories are so intertwined, like the three strands of a braid, that I have to tell it all.

It was, predictably, Silas that I gave the note to as soon as we got home from school. He glanced at it and then sat down on the couch. ‘Why now? I’m pleased, of course. I think it’s the right thing to do, have done for ages, but why now?’

I took the note back and scribbled on it.
Josie talked me into it.

He sighed. ‘I’m glad someone did. So you want me to tell Mum for you?’

More scribble.
She might listen to you.

He made a huffing noise and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘You think so? Never mind, I’ll give it a go?’

When?
my eyes asked.

‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘As far as I know she’s home tonight. I’ll cook and then I’ll drag her to the table. We’ll talk about it then.’

My brother set the stage well. He laid the table and even chilled a bottle of white wine for our mother. She’d probably let him have a glass. He wasn’t a big fan, but he’d sip it to be polite. ‘Makes her think of me as more of an adult,’ he said as he put a bowl of tossed salad on the table, ‘which is not a bad thing for the purposes of this conversation.’ He’d thrown together a bag of frozen seafood with some pasta sauce and cooked spaghetti. It would taste great, I could tell, from the smell wafting through the house. He made dessert too. ‘Keep her at the table longer,’ he said with a wink. ‘Wear her down!’ It was only a mango sorbet and ice-cream layer mix in some glasses, but it looked good.

Mum appeared at half six, just when we’d begun to think she wasn’t coming back after all. Silas cleared his glower and bit his tongue until he could manage to say, ‘Busy day?’ with reasonable aplomb.

She showed us startled eyes, as if she hadn’t fully realised we were there. Ghost children, that’s what we were.

I’d always known that of myself, even from the earliest days before Dad left. I might as well have been a wraith around the house for she never saw me except to notice some misdemeanour. And as I tried so hard to stay out of trouble, in practice she seldom did see me.

‘Not bad. I had a meeting with a broker who wants some pieces for an overseas client. It’s a reasonably large commission but drearily dull, alas.’

‘I cooked,’ said Silas. ‘It’s ready if you want to sit down. So what does the drearily dull client want you to do?’

I laughed secretly at my brother getting what he really wanted in a sneaky sandwich with the commission talk. Funny and clever. But that was my brother.

He ushered Mum through to the dining room before she had time to process what he was up to. I zoomed through to the kitchen and appeared at his shoulder with the wine bottle just in time. ‘Nice one,’ he whispered out of our mother’s earshot as he filled her glass.

‘He’s Icelandic, I understand. Wants me to do a series of paintings based on a theme of betrayal.’

Silas looked confused. ‘That sounds quite open-ended. I would have thought it would be interesting. You know, it’s not one of those “Give me a six-by-four canvas of a tree in winter” types.’

‘Betrayal though,’ she said with distaste, plucking a breadstick from the glass and nibbling delicately on it – I envied my mother that, the ability to nibble delicately. ‘So . . . overdone at the moment. Mark Rackham’s just exhibited with that as a theme, and then Judy Renfrew did a set of sculptures. Not to mention Clive Harding’s show only last year.’

‘So why didn’t he go to them? He must like your work, I guess.’ Silas waved at me to bring the food through from the kitchen while he kept her talking.

‘Yes, he’s a big fan apparently. And he thought nobody would convey betrayal more perfectly than me, or so his broker says.’

Silas laughed. ‘Is this some personal thing for him, this theme of betrayal? Has he got dumped recently?’

Our mother winced. ‘Silas, try to have some empathy.’

Ha! That was a joke coming from her!

‘Yes, I understand he does want me to work on this theme for very particular reasons. I believe his marriage ended a few months ago.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘It’s a painful time for him.’

Artistic people were allowed to feel pain. In fact, in my mother’s eyes, it was only artistic people who felt true pain. The rest of us Philistines didn’t have the temperament to suffer. I think she viewed us like cows – too placidly bovine to hurt much.

‘Oh,’ Silas replied, serving pasta on to the plates. ‘Bummer. I guess he really loved her very badly if he’s coughing up to pay you for a series. It’s not like you’re cheap.’

‘You cannot set a price on art,’ she answered with a pained expression.

Silas refrained from pointing out that no, actually, she set a hefty price tag on hers. Not that either of us minded. After all, her art paid for everything. It was the two-facedness of it that got on our nerves, but she would never see it like that.

She took a small bite of the pasta. My mother was one of those uber-annoying women who never got pasta sauce on her chin. Whereas I had to surreptitiously check over my face with my hand every few mouthfuls in case I was smeared with it. ‘This is good,’ she said. ‘Did you cook it from scratch?’

‘More or less,’ Silas said, ignoring that the seafood came ready mixed in a bag from Waitrose and the sauce was out of a tub.

‘Hmm, well done. You know, perhaps you have some ability as a chef. Have you considered exploring that as an avenue?’

To our mother, computing was not really an appropriate thing to be gifted in. You could tell she thought there was something terribly vulgar about it.

‘It’s something to think about,’ Silas said, ducking the issue quickly before he got a lecture on how life without art was mere existence. Our sister Kerensa’s maths genius was just allowable because everyone knew the link between maths and art and music. Look at Da Vinci: artist, sculptor, musician, mathematician.

Silas waited until her mouth was full and then added, ‘Rafi has something she wants to ask you.’

‘Rafi?’ My mother forgot herself so far as to speak with her mouth full. And she sounded rather as if she’d forgotten who I was.

Silas’s eyes flashed with annoyance and he looked away. ‘Yes, she wants to go and see someone. I looked this stuff up and there’s a choice – speech and language therapist or psychologist.’